


Ms. Lilly

by Seiya234



Series: Transcendence AU [10]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Gen, Transcendence AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-01 22:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4037059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiya234/pseuds/Seiya234
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whereupon Dipper doesn't know everything, and Miss Willow Pines meets her new English teacher and realizes there's more to her than meets the eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in and feel the motion of this rock spinning in the void, feel the slight shift of the plates in his bones.

Breathe out and winds blowing wildly the next continent over in time with the air leaving his body.

Breathe in and wonder if he should let the plants he felt under him take root within him, wondered if it was better for the ground to swallow him, to let him sleep forever, free from the pain of-

Suddenly he was soaking wet, skin stinging with the touch of holy water, and Dipper shot up, broken from his reverie.

Mabel stood next to him on their front lawn, an empty water bucket in her hand.

“You scared Willow,” she said, kneeling a bit to offer him a hand up. He took it with a wince and Mabel easily pulled him to his feet, noticing the plant roots poking from his back.

“How?” he asked. “I made sure I was out of the house before I started.”

Mabel frowned a bit as she turned Dipper around and began to clean his back off.

“I know but one minute she was sleeping on my lap while I was knitting, and then she was screaming about the ground swallowing her up.”

Mabel held up a piece of root, and raised an eyebrow at Dipper, who blushed.

“Oops,” was all he could manage to say.

She sighed but said nothing, knowing how much of a crapshoot it could be for Dipper to access his omniscience sometimes.

“Did you find out anything?” Mabel asked as they made their way to the porch swing.

Dipper sat down after Mabel did, and with a kick of his legs started them moving.

“Not a lot,” Dipper admitted ruefully. “There’ve never really been a lot of empaths running around. Right now there’s-” senses expanded and contracted back in on himself “-about forty.”

“In Oregon?” Mabel asked.

Dipper shook his head.

“In America?”

Dipper shook his head again, and Mabel felt the bottom of her stomach drop out.

“No. Way.”

Dipper was about to continue but then Willow poked her head out of the house.

“Uncle Dipper, why is the inside of my head itchy?”

“Come here Will,” Dipper asked, stilling the porch swing. She came over and clambered onto his lap, and Dipper licked his thumb and smeared it across her forehead. Willow giggled and bopped at his hands.

“Better?”

Willow jumped off. “Yup.”

“Now go back inside-”

Mabel interjected. “-and tell Hank and Acacia that I want the three of you to sort your laundry.”

Willow’s lip stuck out but she went inside to do as she was told.

Mabel grinned at Dipper. “That’s the kids out of the way for fifteen minutes. What else did you learn?”

Dipper thought back and then remembered why he had started spiraling out of control in the first place.

“What’s wrong?”

He put a hand behind his head. “Um….”

“Dipper Pines you tell me  _right now-”_

Her hand was moving towards the flip flop on her foot and Dipper held up his hands in acquiescence. “Okay, okay!”

He took off his hat, held it loosely in his hands. “From what I could tell before…before I lost myself, if Willow’s like them then she should be able to sense what other people are feeling-“

“The colors she sees-“

Dipper nodded. “Yeah, the auras. And after a while she’ll probably start feeling other people’s emotions like they’re her own.”

“Okay.” Mabel waited for the other shoe to drop (the metaphorical one, not the one she had in her hand to fwap her brother if he waffled again.)

“Everyone…every mind I had touched…Mabel, they were all insane. And from what I could tell when I was researching, almost everyone with empathy ends up going…going mad. They end up completely overwhelmed with information, and they just drown, they lose themselves-“

A tear dripped off Dipper’s face and hit his white dress shirt.

“I’m so sorry Mabel,” he said quietly, unable to look at his twin.

“Don’t be.”

Dipper’s head shot up and he gaped at Mabel. He could tell from her face and aura that she was worried, but nowhere near as worried as he thought she would (should) be.

Mabel started to count on her left hand, each finger with a different ring on it.

She extended the finger with her decoder ring on. “One, if you ever apologize for saving the life of my daughter, your niece again, I’ll ward off the Shack and make you sleep on the porch for a week, and run the hose on you every day to wake you up. Okay?”

Dipper gulped.

“Yes Mabel.”

Another finger, bedecked with a Ring Pop, stretched out. “Two, she has you and she has us. We know what Willow can do. We know a little bit what she’ll be going through. You can teach her how to keep her mind clear I bet. She will always be surrounded by people who know her situation and love her and want to help her. That’s…” Mabel’s face dropped. “-that’s more than most other empaths have, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Finally-“The finger with her engagement ring extended outwards. “You should take the kids to the store and get some ice cream for after dinner tonight.”

Dipper immediately perked up.

“Can I get my own tub?”

“Sure Dipdops!”

“Can I get five tubs?”

“Don’t get greedy now.”

“Three?”

“Yeah sure brobro!”

The mood lightened, the twins went inside.

It never occurred to either of them that Dipper hadn’t learned everything that he could about empathy.

\---------------------------------------

Willow Pines wasn’t surprised when they got back from Christmas Break that their English teacher, Ms. Cheboi, wasn’t in the room when class walked in. Ms. Cheboi had spent all of November and December teaching from her chair, heavily pregnant. She was on maternity leave for the rest of the year, and they were supposed to have a new teacher today.

Willow was going to miss Ms. Cheboi. She was one of the most patient people she had ever met, and even through her shields Willow could feel aqua waves of kindness rolling off of Ms. Cheboi.

She couldn’t wait for Uncle Dipper or Mom to take her by the hospital to see Ms. Cheboi and meet the baby that Willow had spent the last two months watching grow. It had been the most amazing thing, to not only see a separate set of colors coming from Ms. Cheboi, but see them grow stronger every day the closer she had gotten to her due date.

(She had tried to explain to her family, but only Uncle Dipper really got what she meant. Then he had a funny look on his face and was giving off happy-sad vibes.)

Willow’s best friend, Vierna Ramirez, slipped into the desk on Willow’s left, and popped a piece of bubble gum into her mouth.

She blew a bubble and popped it. “Whaddya think the new teacher will be like dude?” she asked Willow.

“Someone who teaches us stuff,” Willow deadpanned, and Vierna blew a raspberry at her. She almost said something else, but then the door opened and their new teacher walked in.

Their new teacher was perhaps the palest person Willow had ever seen in her life, and she had met several vampires. She had limp blonde hair, light blue eyes, and wore a white pantsuit with white heels.

Willow wondered what her laundry bills were like, and if she could see every vein in her arm like a jelly fish.

She snuck out a piece of paper, to pass that observation as a note to Acacia because it was simply  _too_  good to be wasted, but suddenly her shields were being battered by a wave of…positive emotions?

Willow looked around as unobtrusively as she could. Everyone in the class room was suddenly happy, bright yellows and pinks and in Gary’s case, chartreuse and brown mixed into a weird hue. It was weirdly uniform, almost as if someone had slammed the emotion into their heads.

The wave subsided as soon as it came, and everyone unconsciously relaxed back to their normal emotional states.

Willow looked up at their new teacher and felt her heart skip a beat.

For the first time in her life, or at least the first time she could remember, she could read…nothing from this woman. Not a slip of color, not an insight from her Sight, absolutely nil. Looking at her for long, looking at the clear nothingness that surrounded her teacher made Willow’s stomach churn.

She caught the woman’s eyes before she could look down and saw there the same shock that was surely on Willow’s face.

The moment stretched, long and uncomfortable, until they both looked away at the same time.

Their new teacher shook her head, and then clapped her hands together.

“Hello kids! My name is Ms. Aspicia, but  _please_ , call me Ms. Lilly!!! Now, I know that Ms. Cheboi assigned everyone  _Hamlet_  to read over break so if you will turn your pages to-“

Thoughtlessly, Willow grabbed her copy of the play out of her backpack but her mind was churning.

The rest of the class passed in a blur, and Willow wasn’t surprised that as she was walking out the door with Acacia and Vierna, Ms. Lilly tapped her on her shoulder.

“Uh, Willow was it? A moment of your time please?”

Acacia shot her a Look, and a hand went into her pocket. Willow sighed and shook her head. Acacia nodded and walked down the hall with Vierna.

Ms. Lilly drew the door to a crack, and motioned for Willow to sit down.

“Play dumb kid,” Grunkle Stan’s voice said in her ear. “Play dumb and play it by ear.”

“Um, is this going to take long?” Willow asked, twirling a piece of hair on her finger. She would have played it a little heavier on the ditz but she was concentrating as hard as she could in making sure her shields were still in place. “I gotta get to class.”

Ms. Lilly laid a hand on Willow’s arm. The teen stiffened despite herself, but if Ms. Lilly noticed she hid it well.

“Willow, I can tell that you have a special talent. You do not have to lie to me, you can see them, can’t you? Colors around everyone you see? Feeling things that aren’t coming from you?”

Reluctantly, Willow nodded. No use lying when Ms. Lilly could obviously tell.

“You’ve taught yourself how to protect your person and your mind, absolutely _astounding,_  I assure you.”

“Thank you,” Willow politely said, and did not correct Ms. Lilly.

“What else have you discovered?” she asked, leaning in a little closer to Willow, who did her best not to flinch away. Ms. Lilly didn’t have the overabundance of emotions that usually overwhelmed her when people got close, but habits died hard, and Willow wasn’t used to being this close to someone she didn’t know.

“What do you mean?” Willow responded, genuinely puzzled. When it came to her empathy, Willow figured telling what others were feeling and occasionally feeling those emotions herself was about the extent of it. She did a lot more with the Sight and her fire than she did her empathy.

“You don’t know?” Ms. Lilly looked shocked. “Oh! Oh my goodness, my dear girl. Well-“

The warning bell rang and Ms. Lilly grimaced.

“I must let you go, I know, but think on this. There is much, much more you can do with your gift than you could have ever dreamed of.”

The bottom dropped from Willow’s stomach. Uncle Dipper had  _never_  told her that.

The shock must have been apparent on Willow’s face, because Ms. Lilly patted her hand with a little laugh.

“I know just that idea must be a lot to take in! Why don’t you think about it for a day or two, and when you’re ready, come see me after school. I will teach you all you could ever want to know.”

Ms. Lilly got up and rummaged in her desk.

“Need a late note?”

\--------------------

She sensed the kid coming towards them before anyone else noticed.

Nothing new really.

And to be fair, everyone else was distracted.

 Vierna and her older brother Thor were having an intense conversation over whether Tío Soos’ infinite pizza slice was _realllllly_ infinite or if it would run out after all seven of them kept biting on it for like, a really long time dude, you know?

Acacia was giggling with Reina and another friend of theirs, Tracey Valentino. Willow had known forever that her sister had the world’s biggest crush on Reina, despite Acacia consistently insisting that they were “just friends. Really. No, really really I mean it.” In the last year she had noticed that Reina was starting to feel the same way around Acacia as well, deep lustful reds and confused pinks and a tinge of yellow anxiety.

She and Hank had mutually decided that if one hadn’t asked the other out by Reina’s birthday in July, they were going to lock the two of them in a room together until they spat it out.

Speaking of Hank, he was currently holding hands and looking dreamily into the eyes of his latest boyfriend, Hiroto. Hiroto in turn looked like he really wanted to eat his lunch.

It was funny, Willow thought. Hank on the surface seemed like he would be an open book, and as easy to read. But she could never really read him. There was a part of her older brother that was closed off, like…like he was one of those nesting dolls that they still randomly had twelve of at the Shack. But after the outer doll, all the others were glued shut, layers within layers locked away.

She liked Hiroto. And she had a feeling Hank and him would amicably break up in about another month, just like every other person Hank had gone out with before.

Hank loved everyone, but it was, for now that way, only on that first layer.

“Um, excuse me, are you Willow?”

Everyone else looked up at the young man, probably a freshman, who had come up to their table. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Acacia slip a hand in to her pocket, and Hank stiffen ever so slightly and sighed. Darn it, she _had_ it.

She shook her head and her older siblings settled down. Willow looked up at the kid, all brown hair and violet anxiety and something a little darker underneath. She didn’t recognize him; probably someone from Odenton, the next town over. Southwest High School was mostly kids from Gravity Falls, but there were also a lot of kids from Odenton too, who weren’t as sanguine about the supernatural as Fallers tended to be.

“Do you think you could, you know, tell me if Sharon Li would go out with me?”

Willow sighed. And as she had found out in middle school, when they went from Gravity Falls Elementary to Southwest Middle School, the ones that weren’t scared of her or hated her guts thought she could see the future.

“No.”

He looked completely gobsmacked. He must be new.

He stuttered out, “Wha…what do you mean no?!”

“I can’t see the future. Or read minds. So yeah, can’t tell you. Wouldn’t tell you even if I could because that’s kind of invasive and creepy.”

Plum anger burst out all over him as he latched on to what he wanted to hear rather than what she said.

“You _can_ so tell me and you just _won’t!_ Oh my god you are such a bi-“

Hank and Acacia, bless them, did nothing, except try and keep massive shit eating grins from their faces.

Willow looked at him, staring deep into his brown eyes.

She said nothing.

“Wha…what are you doing?”

She continued staring, and noticed a particularly nasty zit on his forehead.

“I…I’m…you….” He paled and ochre fear washed over him.

“I don’t need you any way!” he spat out and turned from the table.

Willow had another bite of her sandwich, and dutifully held up a hand for Thor to high five her.

“I think that was like a six,” Hank said, opening a bag of pretzels.

“No dude, that was an eight, she really had him going,” Vierna argued.

Hiroto opened his mouth, and everyone paused because Hiroto almost never talked.

“Seven,” he said, and took a sip of his Coke. 

Acacia leaned into Willow, knocking her head against her little sister’s shoulder.

“So what did Ms. Lilly want to keep you after for?”

Willow froze. _Fuck._

“Nothing. Just told me to pay more attention in class.”

Acacia cocked her head. “Really? That’s it?”

She looked down at her sandwich, no longer hungry.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

\-----------------

“And hold…and hold…and _good!_ ”

Willow fell back on her butt panting. She had never thrown fire longer than four minutes before, yet here was Uncle Dipper saying by summer they were going to make it up to ten.

She felt a hitch in her chest, sighed, and took out her inhaler to take a puff.

Uncle Dipper threw aside the umbrella he had been using to ward himself off from Willow’s flames. It disappeared into the ether, as he sat down next to her on the grass. He pulled her into a hug, and she felt the last remaining weaknesses in her chest disappear.

“Thanks Uncle Dipper.”

She looked up at her uncle, and then down at the grass, up into glowing eyes briefly, and down at the grass again. How to ask, how to ask….

“What’s eating you Little Fighter?” he said.

“Nothing.”

He flipped her hair over her face, making her sputter and laugh.

“Uncle Dipper!!” she cried as she pulled her hair back and away.

“You going to tell me what’s on your mind?” he asked, with a grin that showed both rows of teeth.

She looked down at her hands, shy again.

“Would….would you ever lie to me Uncle Dipper?” she finally asked.

Uncle Dipper was infinitely better at guarding his emotions, his aura from her than she ever would be, but she still got a wave of “oh shit” from him.

“I can’t promise you that Willow,” he replied, sadness etched on his face.

She could see, if not feel, the pain coming from him. He was going to be more honest than usual for the next few minutes then, out of guilt.

“Are there others like me?” she asked.

Dipper froze.

Finally, he managed to choke out, “Yes.” He looked at her. “Why do you want to know?”

“Oh, I was just thinking about how I’ve met people who can see the future and people that turn into wolves or geese under the full moon, but I’ve never met anyone like me.” There, that should be the right balance between airiness and genuine emotion (because she wasn’t exactly _lying_ , not all the way.)

“Oh. Okay. Um….”

Uncle Dipper flopped backwards onto the grass, and huffed out a breath.

“What don’t you want to tell me?” Willow pressed, flopping down as well, resting her head on his stomach.

He said nothing and she pressed on. “Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than what I can think of if you give me about twenty minutes and-“

“They’re all mad.”

Well. Holy fuck.

She took a deep shuddering breath. “Go on.”

“I think before they went crazy, they could do the same things you could.”

“And?”

Uncle Dipper looked sheepish. “And that’s kind of all I know.”

Willow sat up and looked at her Uncle.

“Seriously?”

He frowned a bit. “Yes seriously.”

“But…but…you know _everything!”_ Even as the words left her mouth Willow knew she was being unfair, because…well, Uncle Dipper didn’t, and he didn’t like what he had to do to learn more things.

He must have seen the changing look on her face because he didn’t call Willow out on that, just sighed.

“I’m sorry Willow. It’s….I…I know that it can be lonely. Being…unique.”

Willow honestly hadn’t thought about being the only empath she had ever met until today. But Uncle Dipper probably wouldn’t feel any better if she told him that.

“Did you say everyone else like me is mad?” she asked instead, because that was a more pressing concern than the Crushing Burden of Uniqueness. “Do I need to worry about that?”

He smiled, and patted her hand. “I think you’ll be fine there Willow-cat. I’ve tried my best to teach you how to shield your thoughts, and we all know what you can do. As far as I can tell, no one else had that.”

He sat up and got to his feet, offering her a hand. She took it and he pulled her up and into a hug.

“Are you going to be okay?” Uncle Dipper asked.

“Yeah,” she said, face full of dress shirt and the smell of pine.

“Think we can convince your dad to make corn dogs for dinner?”

Willow giggled as they started to walk back to the house. “Noooooo! Corn dogs taste like Play-doh!” Uncle Dipper smiled, like she hoped, clearly relaxing and relieved that he hadn’t messed her up emotionally or whatever.

Her mind was buzzing however. She had a lot to think about before school tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

She didn’t talk to Ms. Lilly after class next day, or the day after that either. If there was one thing that she learned from Grunkle Stan (well, she learned lots of things from him but-), it was that it wouldn’t do for the mark know how eager you were, how interested.

“They need to come to you kid,” he had told her one day when she was eight and she had interrupted a high stakes game of poker in the Library on accident. “They’re fish, and you’re the fisherman. Now hand me that card off the floor.”

She couldn’t quite do that since Ms. Lilly was her teacher and a person in authority, so after a week, she stayed behind after class, staying in her desk even as her sister and friend and classmates left.

Ms. Lilly finished erasing the chalkboard and turned around. Today she wearing a white dress with long sleeves that cinched at her waist, and a necklace with a black lacquered rose hanging from the chain.

“Oh, my goodness, hello Willow darling! I did not see you there.”

Willow looked down, feigning shyness. “I…I thought about what you offered me…” she started tentatively, hesitating between words.

Ms. Lilly moved across the room, sitting down in the desk next to Willow, a look of grave concern on her face.

“Willow, this is a big step you are taking, it’s okay to have taken your time to think about it.” She took Willow’s hand in hers, cold and clammy. “I’m not mad darling, I promise.”

“Th…thank you Ms. Lilly.”

“Come here after school today and we will begin. Oh I am so terribly excited, not only to teach you but to learn from you as well.”

A dampness came into her eyes. “I…I have never run into another one of our kind before, and it means the _world_ that our paths have crossed.”

Willow steeled herself and squeezed Ms. Lilly’s hand.

“I know ma’am.”

\---------                                                                              

“Dude, what’s up with you and Ms. Lilly? Are you failing?”

Willow closed her locker and looked at her siblings, a tall redheaded island among the flood of students heading towards the buses and home.

“No Acacia, I’m not failing.”

Hank leaned against the row of lockers. “Are you going to discuss about how _Hamlet_ discusses in length the differences between a good ruler and a poor one?”

Acacia and Willow both looked at their brother and he shrugged.

“Cliff Notes. You should check them out.”

Willow ran a hand through her hair. “Look, I just need some extra tutoring, and she’s going to help me.”

Acacia crossed her arms. “Nice try Will, but you’ve gotten A’s in English every semester since we were seven.”

Willow tried not to groan out loud. They were worried about her, especially after what had happened a few months ago, but she didn’t want to tell them about this, this was her problem to deal with, not theirs….

Hank must have seen the storm on her face because he asked “Are you in trouble?”

“No.”

Hank nodded. “And you’d let us know if you were?”

“Of course.”

Hank looked at her for a second, and Willow managed not to quail under the bland stare he was giving her. Finally her older brother nodded.

“Okay. See you at home then?”

Acacia was gaping at him, but Willow nodded. “Yeah, I won’t be too long.”

Waving to her siblings, she turned to go down the hall into Ms. Lilly’s classroom. Her heart was pumping fast and she patted her breast pocket quickly to make sure her inhaler was still in there. She had no idea what to expect.

She opened the door and Ms. Lilly was there, grading papers, light streaming through the open windows. The English teacher looked up at the sound of her coming in, and smiled, teeth only barely whiter than her skin, than her clothes.

“Oh hello Willow, are you ready to begin?” she asked as she put down her red pen.

Willow sat down in an empty desk. “Yes ma’am.”

Ms. Lilly giggled, and covered her mouth with a hand tipped in French manicured nails. “Oh Willow, there is no need to be so formal! Please, just Ms. Lilly.”

“Yes ma-Ms. Lilly.”

Ms. Lilly propped her chin up on her hands and leaned in to look closer at Willow, at the air around her. Finally, she said, “How did you learn to shield yourself?”

“Oh, I just thought that I needed like, a big bubble around my head, and I tried really hard, and I made one.”

“Ah. I see.” Ms. Lilly steepled her fingers.

“The thing about bubbles,” she said, and motioned with her fingers and _oh fuck her shields were gone_. “Is that they pop.”

Willow scrambled to assemble her shields again, blowing up a free space around her like Uncle Dipper had taught her, only for Ms. Lilly to tear them away again.

Her fingers dug into her hands and she felt the flames under her skin burning to be let out. She shook from the effort of controlling her temper, and Ms. Lilly laughed.

“I was wondering when I’d see some of your fire; I knew you couldn’t be as docile as you were showing me.”

Willow didn’t trust herself to say anything, and only looked down at the desk, her hands clenched tightly into fists, her whole body shaking.

Ms. Lilly got up from behind her desk and came to Willow, shading her eyes as she did so. “My, _my_ , your anger is so bright. I don’t even need any talent to see _that._ ”

Willow blushed despite herself, and getting even more frustrated because of that.

Ms. Lilly sat down next to her, having grabbed a sheet of paper and a pencil. She began to sketch concentric circles onto the paper, and Willow leaned in to look.

“You can’t just have one shield because it will work yes, but it is a brittle kind of strength, easy to crack and break. You need to think of your shields as being layered, multi-part. That way, even if someone pops the first one, there is another there to take its place. Now observe.”

Slowly, Willow began to sense flares of emotion coming from Ms. Lilly; a bit of smugness, a hint of happiness. Willow knew that that wasn’t everything, that Ms. Lilly still had one or two shields up, just like she was focusing so heavily on being angry to mask the anxiety and suspicion that she was really feeling.  

Then even those slight feelings went away, and Ms. Lilly smiled at Willow.

“Why don’t you try?”

It was hard, harder than Willow imagined, to put up one layer, but then another, and another. She felt her heart began to race, and her breaths come faster and shallower, but she kept adding layers upon layers to her shield.

She paused to take a breath, and to let Ms. Lilly evaluate her work so far, only to have what felt like an iron fish punch through her shields, breaking them apart.

This time she didn’t have to feign the anger.

“ _What the hell-“_

Ms. Lilly pursed her lips. “Language dear. And honestly, did you really think that you were going to get it right the first time? Or that you’ll always have time to take a breather?”

“I-“

“You have gotten complacent, _indolent._ Luckily, this can be fixed. Now, again. If it helps, think of your layers as a way for you to build more layers when you’re under attack…”

\----------------------

Willow collapsed on the couch, utterly exhausted. She got tired making fire, but that was different, that was a physical effect on the world.

She probably shouldn’t be surprised, but she was pretty surprised by how tiring an hour of purely mental work could be.

Willow rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes, bumping her glasses up her head. They had worked out a schedule; three times a week after school. Ostensibly, Willow had volunteered to help out some students Ms. Lilly knew from another school.

It was a little weak, but considering that Willow was an A student, Ms. Lilly didn’t do any extracurricular activities, and the school was small enough that they couldn’t make up a tutee, it was the best they could come up with.

There were heavy steps coming from outside on the porch, going through the Library, and materialized in the living room in the form of her-

Willow smiled. “Dad!”

He smiled and sat down on the couch next to her. Willow clambered onto his lap like a baby giraffe climbing on the back of an older giraffe.

She threw her arms around his shoulders and gave him a big hug. “Dad!”

Her dad hugged her back. “Hey sweetie.”

She leaned her head against his shoulders, and felt the tension drain from her neck and forehead.

“How was your day Will?”

“Gooooood…” Willow replied, drawing out the word as she thought about all what had happened that day.

Her dad looked down at her and raised an eyebrow. “That was an awful lot of ‘o’s’ in that sentence young lady. Everything okay?”

Willow paused.

Part of her wanted to tell her dad about Ms. Lilly. She trusted Dad’s advice above everyone else’s; not that she didn’t trust her Mom and Grunkle Stan and Uncle Dipper, of course. But Dad gave, if not the best advice, at least the most grounded and practical.

And if she was being honest with herself, she was scared. She was playing a game with Ms. Lilly, and Willow didn’t doubt for a second that Ms. Lilly probably felt the same. She was terribly, viscerally aware that she was in tenth grade, that she was only fifteen.

Aware that a few months ago she had almost drowned in a kiddie pool in a dark trailer, hair and lungs aching at the memory.

Her father’s heart beat strong and steady against her ear on her chest. Dad would know what to do, Dad could help….

Willow looked up and the first thing she saw was not her dad’s eyes or crazy red hair so like hers, but instead a pair of antlers, mercifully free of hands.

(Those only came out, she had discovered, when Dad was mad.)

 It felt like she had been punched in the stomach, seeing the odd combination of bone and wood spiraling out of her dad’s hair, bursting from his skull.

She had done that.

Well, okay, technically, it had been Uncle Dipper who had done that.

But if she hadn’t been kidnapped _again_ , she was always fucking getting into trouble, Dad wouldn’t have those antlers.

Wouldn’t wake up from nightmares that she could feel upstairs and across the house.

Wouldn’t be able to chop vegetables like a pro and shuffle cards with one hand and oh how they had laughed at that at first, but she could feel the worry coming off her dad in waves, she made the connection like he had, and she had puked up the lunch Dad had made in the toilet that day.

Wouldn’t have an aura that was now brighter than before, and she wasn’t sure what was going on with that but it couldn’t be good.

Mom and Dad and Uncle Dipper had all sat her down or taken her aside to let her know that what happened wasn’t her fault.

But she looked at the antlers her dad had and couldn’t help but feel that it was.

That night, hair still wet from the water she had almost died in, Willow had sworn to herself that she would never be helpless, never need or ask for help again.

Never have someone get hurt because of her again.

She would take care of herself. She could take care of herself. Even if she wanted help, even if she could her feel her heart racing counterpoint to the calm, steady beat of her dad’s, none of that mattered.

Willow had told herself that from now on she would need no saving. She would save herself.

Even if she died doing it.

“Willow?”

She breathed in, smelling old books and blue sturdiness and tree sap.

Breathed out.

Willow buried her face into her dad’s shirt, and screwed her eyes shut so no tears would fall out.

“I’m fine Dad. Just tired, that’s all.”

And if she told herself that enough, maybe she’d start believing it.


	3. Chapter 3

The next two months passed in a blur for Willow.

There were lunches with her siblings and her friends, afternoons spent at the arcade with Vierna, going to see Aunt Grenda at the pet store and almost getting eaten by a basilisk.

There was card games with Grunkle Stan, Uncle Dipper taking her out to blow up hay bales, another three sweaters from Mom and trips to Bend with Dad.

And there were lessons from Ms. Lilly, lessons that taxed her, made her feel like she was being stretched thin.

It had taken two weeks before Willow was finally able to shield herself well enough to prevent Ms. Lilly from blasting through the walls she had erected around her mind.

But she didn’t even get a chance to relax before Ms. Lilly began her next round of lessons.

Uncle Dipper had mentioned once that everyone, or at least everyone who Saw like the two of them did, saw people’s emotions differently. Mom, to Willow, was nothing but shades of red. Yet to Uncle Dipper, Willow’s mom was every color of the rainbow, plus a few only he could see. When she had mentioned that Mom was only ever red to her, he had seemed completely shocked.

Ms. Lilly, on the other hand, had explained that every empath experienced the emotions of others differently; she, for example, saw everyone in varying shades of grey.

Then she had pointed out that since Willow had spent the majority of her life with the equivalent of being wrapped in layers of wool and cotton, Willow was nowhere near as good at reading the emotions around her as she thought she was.

Once Willow’s pride was done being wounded, she had to admit that Ms. Lilly had a point.

On Ms. Lilly’s advice, she spent an hour or two each day with her shields down, just observing the people around her. She threw up the first day, and spent the next three with blinding headaches. Even now it was almost crippling, the waves of emotions washing over her. It felt like she was a rock that was being inexorably worn down by water, like if she wasn’t on her guard everything that made her _her_ would be washed away.

But it was worth it because she was starting to be able to read more and more detail into what people felt. Laticia wasn’t just angry, she was angry with shades of lust mixed in and when Willow heard two days later that Laticia and her boyfriend Marcus broke up she wasn’t at all surprised. Mrs. Doris, the woman who rang them up when they got lunch, was sad with tinges of relief, and in the paper the next day, she read about how Mrs. Doris’ mom had passed after a long battle with cancer.

Willow still didn’t trust Ms. Lilly farther than she could throw a rock. But she had to admit that she was learning a lot under her tutelage.

The last bits of snow were beginning to melt from the ground, and Spring Break was around the corner when Willow walked into Ms. Lilly’s room and was met with a complete surprise.

“What will we be doing today?” Willow asked as she shoved her backpack under her desk. She expected Ms. Lilly to respond the same way that she had the last few times, which was to go outside and observe other people.

Ms. Lilly finished off an apple that someone had brought her (an honest to goodness apple), and laid the core on her desk.

“Something different I think,” she responded, a smug little smirk on her face.

It felt like the bottom dropped out of WIllow’s stomach. What now?

What she said aloud was a lame “Oh?”

Ms. Lilly stood up, and walked over to the window, looking out on students who had missed their bus or were otherwise waiting for their ride. The breeze coming in ruffled her limpid blonde hair and white suit jacket.

She turned to look back at Willow.

“My dear, have you ever considered that your power could be used externally?”

It felt like the world was dropping away from Willow. She hadn’t, she honestly hadn’t. She knew that Uncle Dipper could do stuff like that, but that was because he was a demon. There was no way _she_ could do that.

The English teacher chuckled at the look on Willow’s face. “I am terribly sorry to mock you my dear, but you look like a gaping fish right now.”

“What do you mean?” she asked weakly?

Ms. Lilly smiled and brushed a piece of lint off of her front.

“It’s like the jump from reading to writing darling. Once you know how to read, it’s not much of a jump to writing and creating, heh, words of your own.”

Willow blushed. “It’s a bit….I…I’ve never thought of things that way.”

“No? It’s never happened before? You’ve never wished to get out of trouble with, say, your mother and suddenly her mood changed? Or got into an argument with your sister and then she stopped being mad and started seeing things your way?”

Willow shook her head. No, _no_ , she would have felt it, she would have known…

Ms. Lilly looked, for once, a little taken aback.

“Oh. My. Alright then.” She collected herself. “Well, better late than never. Are you ready for our lesson today?”

Suddenly it felt like Willow was at a crossroads, caught under Ms. Lilly’s limp, blue gaze.

She didn’t trust Ms. Lilly one bit. And until this point she had held to that, felt like she had, if not the upper hand, then at least a foot up in their relationship.

And now Ms. Lilly had done the equivalent of grabbing that foot and flipping Willow back ass over teakettle.

She was terrified, and thankful, so thankful, that her shields were holding, because she had the feeling that she had miscalculated big in her dealings with her teacher. She couldn’t do this, she needed help she-

“Calm down and think,” she heard Grunkle Stan’s voice say in her head. “Plan it out.”

One. She couldn’t trust Ms. Lilly. She knew that coming in, and that variable was still there. So she could at least trust to keep on not trusting her.

Two. If Ms. Lilly could do this then that meant other people like them could as well. For better or worse, she needed to learn this, if only to eventually defend herself from the manipulations of others.

And finally three. It was hard to admit but she had learned far, far more from Ms. Lilly than she ever had from Uncle Dipper. As much as she loved Uncle Dipper, she was starting to realize that he had his blind spots. He had just assumed that there was one way to do things and that was his way. That things worked the same for her as they did for him. Hell, he hadn’t bothered (and she knew she was being unfair here but she was a little more upset about it than she realized) to ever learn more about empathy.

She loved Uncle Dipper, but there was no denying that he was a little bit arrogant.

Ms. Lilly was planning something, Willow didn’t need empathy or the Sight to tell that. That was just common sense. But she really was a great teacher, and Willow had learned more from her in the past two months than she had ever learned from Uncle Dipper over her entire life.

“Alright then, go for it kiddo,” her shoulder Stan said, and Willow nodded at Ms. Lilly.

“I’m ready.”

“Are you sure? You seemed a little lost in thought for a minute; do you need to get a snack before we begin?”

Willow smiled and tittered (she had never tittered before this semester, but Ms. Lilly brought it out of her.)

“Just woolgathering,” Willow blithely responded. “I’m good now.”

Ms. Lilly raised an eyebrow and Willow continued to smile blankly at her. Her teacher gave in.

“Okay. There are several methods and ways to do this that I have taught myself over the course of my life. While eventually you will be as subtle as the surgeon’s knife, we will start with the basics. Now, imagine a fist….”

\-----------------

“I’m not tutoring other kids after school with Ms. Lilly.”

The confession came out in one big rushed breath. The three of them were peeling potatoes for Dad for dinner that night. Their parents and uncles were all far from the kitchen and Willow felt confident enough that no one else but her siblings would hear.

“Oh. Okay.”

Acacia and Hank were considerably less surprised than she thought they would be. Evidently her siblings could tell because Acacia burst out into giggles.

Dude, the look on your face is so funny right now, I wish you could see it,” Acacia managed to choke out between laughs.

“It was kind of a lame excuse,” Hank added as he reached into the bag for another potato.

Willow blushed, and he bumped into her side. “I also figured you’d tell us when you were ready,” he went on.

Acacia settled down and pointed her peeler at Willow. “So what _have_ you been doing?”

“Promise not to tell.”

Hank frowned. “How b-“

“Remember the time we accidentally dumped olive oil on all of Mom’s yarn and we blamed it on a random troop of gnomes? Worse than that.”

Acacia paled. “Okay.”

Slowly, in fits and starts, over a mound of potato peels Willow told them what she had really been up to for the last two months. When she finished, Hank had his concerned face on and Acacia-

“Cooooool!”

Willow wasn’t surprised. This was her sister who as of last month tried to skateboard off the roof and into a pool of water that Dipper had summoned for that purpose. Unsurprisingly, Mom did not care that the pool “was really deep so it’ll totally catch me” or “Mabel I’m going to take it away when we’re done and I got a steak from it” and grounded both of them for a week.

(Willow mentioned off hand once that her mom grounded her uncle and got funny looks at the doctor’s office. Odd.)

Acacia finished off her bag of potatoes and turned to her sister.

“Oh dude, dude, can you try it out on me?”

“Try what?”

“The _thing!_ You know, the emotion thing, the putting it on other people thing?”

Willow furrowed her brow.

“Acacia I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

Her sister pshawed. “Oh my god _relax._ What could possibly go wrong? Come on, do your worse!”

Willow looked at Hank who shrugged. She turned back to Acacia.

“Okay, if you insist.”

Ms. Lilly had explained that everyone had some form of natural shielding around their thoughts and feelings, “but most of the time it is usually weak and brittle, very easy to break.” That was the first thing that needed to go.

Acacia’s shields were almost as strong as Willow’s had been, before she met Ms. Lilly, but she didn’t even need to break through them; they gave away at the merest thought from Willow. She couldn’t help but take a second and wonder if it was because they were triplets or trusted each other or both.

“Now,” Ms. Lilly’s voice rang in her head. “Once you have done that, you project what you want them to feel into their heads. When you get the hang of it, it is almost laughably easy. Trust me.”

Acacia wasn’t taking this seriously at all, so maybe a little fear would be good for her.

She thought back briefly to a small cramped room, the tightening of her chest as she started having an asthma attack, the realization that Grunkle Stan couldn’t kill the beast that they were trapped with, the realization that Uncle Dipper wasn’t going to save them and _she couldn’t breathe_ and-

“Will, _Willow_ , stop, just stop-“

Willow looked up startled out of her thoughts at the sound of Hank’s voice.

Then she looked over where Acacia was.

Then she had to look down because her sister had collapsed onto the floor, curled tightly into a ball. Acacia was shaking so hard that they both could see. She had gone sheet white, her freckles standing out in harsh contrast. Tears were streaking down her face and rapidly pooling into a puddle on the floor. Her breath was coming out in hitches and she was scrabbling at her chest, almost like….almost like she couldn’t breathe.

Willow felt the blood drain from her face and she rapidly tried to think of something happy or soothing, to help Acacia, but she couldn’t because _she did that_ , she had sent her sister to the floor a complete wreck-

Suddenly they heard doors opening, Uncle Dipper’s voice coming from the yard, a car pulling in.

All three of them looked at each other panicked and wide eyed. Acacia and Hank looked at Willow and nodded.

Then Acacia managed to pull herself up off the floor, with great effort as all of her muscles were still obviously tense and hard as rocks from terror. She grabbed one of the knives and made a large shallow gash across her hand, blood instantly coming to the surface and dripping out onto the counter.

When their mom came in, she saw that Acacia had been crying. But that obviously was because she had cut herself cutting potatoes, and even as she watched, Hank was helping her patch up her wound, and Willow was cleaning up around where Acacia’s blood had dripped. Then Uncle Dipper came in, saw the blood and tears, and immediately freaked out. In between their mom trying to comfort Acacia and calm Uncle Dipper down, and Uncle Dipper wanting to heal the wound on her sister’s hand, it was easy for Willow to slip from the kitchen.

She ran upstairs to their bathroom, and immediately threw up everything she ate that day.

Willow wiped her mouth off and then grabbed a piece of toilet paper to catch the tears that had started to trickle down her cheek. She felt dirty.

Maybe it was stupid but she didn’t think that was going to happen, that Acacia would be effected that bad. She just wanted to teach her a lesson, to-

Willow froze, and replayed those last few words in her head.

That wasn’t her.

Was it?

Would she have thought that, _done_ that before she met Ms. Lilly?

Was it possible that Ms. Lilly had been steering her own emotions, making her more trusting, more accepting of Ms. Lilly’s teachings than she otherwise would have been? Or were these urges already in her? It had seemed like such a good idea to learn about this and now she could feel Acacia, her sister, her triplet, feel her anguish even upstairs and across the house.

Willow leaned her head against the cool porcelain of the toilet and let out a silent sob.

She was drowning and she didn’t know how she was going to save herself.


	4. Chapter 4

“Bag check for Willow’s eyes!”

Grunkle Stan barked out a laugh, but his niece didn’t even protest or crack a joke back about the even bigger bags under his. Instead, she buried her head in her arms and curled up in the corner of the living room that Mabel had piled thirty pillows and made a little balcony over. Willow was wrapped up in the biggest sweater she owned, an old one of Henry’s that she swam in, and had a blanket around her. Her long hair hung limp and she was pale and wan.

Stan didn’t need weird mind shit to know that there was something wrong with his niece. He was going to regret this in the morning, but Stan lowered himself onto the floor next to Willow, making sure to sit against the part with lots of pillows

“What’s got your goat kid?” Stan asked.

Willow lifted her head out of her arms and Stan was taken aback at the despair he saw in her gaze. No one that young should have that look in their eyes.

He wasn’t any good at…at…grandpa things, but he had had a few years practice by now, so he put an arm around Willow’s shoulders.

“Do I need to go beat someone up? Give them the old one-two?”

Not a laugh or any sound at all.

He stayed quiet as well. If he gave her enough rope…no, gave her some time, Willow would probably tell him eventually.

Stan had been sitting on the floor for about ten minutes, when Willow finally spoke up.

“I fucked up Grunkle Stan.”

“What? No way, you’re perfect darling-“

“Darling” was evidently the wrong word to use because her face screwed up and she began to sob quietly. Stan gathered her as best as he could into his lap, like when she was younger. She was as tall as him at this point, so it was like he had a collection of elbows and angles sitting on him, but he could stand to be uncomfortable for a few minutes.

Finally, she choked out what had been bothering her, what she had been really doing these past few months with her English teacher.

“And now Acacia wakes up every other night screaming, and Uncle Dipper is helping her but it’s really _my_ fault and…and-“ Willow burst into another round of crying and buried her face in the front of Stan’s shirt.

He rubbed her back while she cried it out and thought fast.

A good, responsible adult would tell her to tell her parents, or her uncle, the literal demon who could take care of something like Ms. Lilly in two seconds flat.

Or he should tell them himself, or arrange with Dipper to have an accident happen.

He could do either of those things, and then never have his niece come to him again to tell him what was really going on.

Stan wasn’t stupid.

Well, okay, maybe he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the bunch but if there was one thing it was good at it was reading people. And the looks Willow still occasionally got on her face whenever she saw Henry, the way she started to practice with making bigger and bigger flames (and not just with Dipper)…Yup, he had an idea why she hadn’t told anyone.

She was going down the same path as Dipper, as Stanley, all of them too god damn stubborn for their own good.

All of them sinking fast until they were in too deep to get help.

If being irresponsible meant that Willow would at least _tell_ someone then so be it.

“Am…am I bad Grunkle Stan?” Willow asked him in a small voice, and it felt like someone stabbed him in the chest.

He squeezed her tight. “No, no honey, you…you could never be bad.”

“How do you know?”

Over her head Stan smiled, but there was nothing happy about it. “Take it from me kid, I know bad when I see it, and you aren’t it.” (He knew it because he saw it in his mirror every morning…)

She said nothing, but her sobs began to die down, so maybe he actually had her believing him (for once, it was the truth.)

“What am I going to do?” she asked him plaintively. “I can’t just…forget all of this-“

“Well, you shouldn’t.”

Willow’s head whipped up and she gawked at him. A fly flew perilously close to her mouth.

Stan sighed. “Look kid, I’m glad you’re learning this stuff. I mean, not _how_ but-“

“But…but I can hurt people with this!”

He lifted one of her long fingered hands in his. “And you can’t with magic blue flames?” Stan asked as gently as he could.

“That’s different!”

“So you and your Uncle Dipper are blowing up hay bales for the fun of it then?” he responded and fuck, he didn’t want to scare her off, make her feel worse, but she needed to _see-_

“I…um…” She laced her fingers together, unlaced them, laced them again. “It’s just….I already _knew_ that was dangerous. This…this wasn’t supposed to be a big deal.”

Stan let that lie because he could tell that Willow meant it, and she already had enough shit to deal with.

“Look kid, you three lead dangerous lives. I know your parents and your uncle and I all rest a little easier at night knowing that you can defend yourselves.”

“I hurt Acacia, Grunkle Stan. That’s not defending myself, that’s shi-…That’s cowardly.”

He sighed. “Yeah, you hurt your sister. But did you mean to do it?”  
  
“I..I…um…no?”

Stan shrugged. “Well, there you go. It’s what you do with it rather than just having it.”

Willow said nothing so Stan went on.

“Look sweetie, if you want my advice? Take everything you can from this woman, game her for all she’s got. She’s awful, but she knows more than you do, so take it, and take care of her when you can.”

His granddaughter still looked unconvinced so Stan went on. “She may use this on you; better you know what to watch for.”

Stan gazed off into the distance. “You need every advantage you can get kid, it may save your life one day. Sometimes you need to get nasty, yanno? Break some bones…minds in your case I guess and-“

Willow’s eyes had filled with tears again, and she started to shake in his arms.

Way to go Stan.

“I’m…I’m…am I going to break everyone I tou…touch Grunkle Stan?” she hiccupped.

Well if he hadn’t realized how bad he had fucked up this pep talk, now he really knew.

“No…no honey, you aren’t, you won’t, I promise.”

Willow sucked up a bunch of snot and looked at him, eyes bleary and cheeks red and wet. “Really?”

“Yes really, I _promise._ What I meant was, you’re learning how to defend yourself. It’s coming from a bad place, but that just means you take what you need and leave the rest behind. Doesn’t make you bad. Just means you need to be careful how you use it. That’s all.”

“Oh. Okay.” Willow paused for a minute.

“Are you going to tell anyone?” she finally asked in a small voice.

Stan sighed. God fucking damnit.

“No kid.”

“Promise?”

He held out his hand. “I promise I won’t if you promise me that you’ll come to me if you need help.”

“I promise Grunkle Stan,” she said, taking his hand in her own.

Stan pretended not to notice the crossed fingers behind her back. The important thing was keeping her talking, and telling at least _someone_ about the shit she was getting into.

His niece was in a world of trouble and he didn’t remember feeling this old since Mabel came back to the house alone one summer day.

\---------

It wasn’t something she noticed right away or all at once.

But it eventually struck Willow how _tired_ everyone in English class seemed to be.

It was the way that Vierna had a harder time helping her dad out at his hardware store. “I don’t understand Will, I’m just so-“ she yawned “- _sleepy_ dude.”

People began to drop off at their desks, one, two, three times in class, and nothing Ms. Lilly did seemed to be able to keep the class awake and alert.

Ellie Hasegawa went to the hospital for two nights after Spring Break for exhaustion. Everyone was stumped; it wasn’t mono, she had been sleeping longer than usual for the past month, and Ellie usually exuded pure energy to Willow.

What finally brought Willow to her senses was that Acacia, her irrepressible sister, always bustling with her latest plan or scheme, who ran laps around the cafeteria because she was so energetic….suddenly wasn’t.

Acacia had spent all of last Saturday on the couch, a book forgotten in her hands. The TV was on but she couldn’t pay attention for more than two minutes. She tried to draw but dozed off on her sketch pad.

That wasn’t like Acacia at all.

Her parents thought that maybe it was the same thing that Ellie had. Uncle Dipper was going half nuts because he couldn’t tell what was wrong either (and she could feel “But I’m a demon, I should _know_ ” coming off of him in waves).

Any other time Willow would have been as stumped as they were.

But the morning after April Fools Day Ms. Lilly had come into class obviously tired from her first night in Gravity Falls during the town’s biggest holiday. She had looked visibly unkempt, though unkempt for Ms. Lilly just meant that she had slight bags under her eyes, and was even paler than usual.

To be fair, the prank war the night before _had_ been pretty epic.

And yet by the end of class Ms. Lilly seemed to have recovered a little bit. Certainly she had perked up from her entrance into class, and the dark circles under her eyes had faded slightly. Willow had noticed offhand that there were odd flares of emotion, strong flashes of amusement or disgust, random bits of happiness or anger. But she had written it off as people’s different reactions to what they were reading; she wasn’t too enamored of _Timeline_ either.

But it was after that class was when everyone started to get tired.

And once Willow had noticed that, she started to notice other things as well.

Like how English class started at 7:30 in the morning but unlike all her other morning class teachers, Ms. Lilly never had a cup of coffee with her.

Or overhearing Ms. Carter and Mrs. Sanchez gossip about how they couldn’t believe Ms. Lilly was pushing sixty- she didn’t even have a wrinkle on her, surely she must have gotten some work done…

The random waves of intense emotion that her classmates had produced over the course of the semester that initially she had put down to her increasing sensitivity but now she wondered.

Willow was starting to get an idea.

It was a nasty idea. It was an idea that she didn’t have complete proof for, an idea she couldn’t quite put into words yet.

But the one thing she was terribly certain of, was that sooner rather than later, something would have to be done about Ms. Lilly.

And she would have to be the one to do it.


	5. Chapter 5

“…no idea…what….I don’t…can’t tell…”

From the couch, Willow could hear bits and pieces of Uncle Dipper’s conversation with her parents. Acacia was sleeping on the couch next to Willow, her mouth open and releasing drool on to Willow’s leg.

She looked out from under her book down at her older sister. This was just a period nap thankfully, and not a nap that resulted from, say, your English teacher draining the energy from you somehow. Acacia had gotten over that after two days, and was back to climbing onto the roof of the house and using the zip line course she and Mom had put up last year.

Uncle Dipper had run himself ragged trying to figure out what had happened to Acacia. But this was something that was outside of his area of experience. It would never occur to him that someone like…like Willow could do this.

Willow could have fixed this for him, told him she knew who had hurt her sister. She could tell him and this would be all over in a matter of seconds-literally.

But.

She had made a promise to herself; no more getting other people involved in her messes. Already she was half regretting telling her siblings and Grunkle Stan about all of this. She should be better, she should have been able to do this _all_ on her own and…

Well, it didn’t matter now. The point was, she was going to handle this herself.

She looked down at her older sister, who had started to snore.

No one else was going to get hurt under her watch, not if she could help it.

\-------

“Dude, you’re coming home with me today.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Willow asked, albeit teasingly.

Vierna smiled, but still shook her head. “Nope. You’ve been super mopey these last few days. You need some…. _pizza._ ” She paused. “Also, Papa and Mom wanna see you and say hi.”

She shut her locker. “Okay, okay, you convinced me! I’ll go!”

“Oh I convinced you eh?” Vierna replied, raising an eyebrow. Willow boffed her on the shoulder and they started walking towards the hardware store. Willow felt herself relaxing as they walked into town. Vierna was her best friend and, considering she was born a month after her and her siblings, her oldest friend as well.

Willow felt a bit ashamed of herself. She really hadn’t been a good friend this semester, so wrapped up in herself and her troubles that-

Vierna poked her in the shoulder. “Dude, stop moping. It’s okay. Besides, we’re here.”

Willow looked up at the wonderfully familiar sign of a tiger shooting lasers out of its eyes, the lasers ‘scoring’ into the wood the words “Fixin’ It With Soos”.

Speaking of Tío Soos, there he was stepping out of his truck, a toolbelt around his waist, and in the question mark shirt he always wore.

The girls ran at him.

“Tío Soos-“

“Dad!”

Soos found himself suddenly on the ground buried under teenage girl, and started to laugh.

“Friday! Willbone!”

He gathered them both in a rib cracking hug and gave them both noogies.

When they had all gotten up, Vierna asked, “Where’s the pizza Papa? Will needs it.”

Soos scratched his chin and looked at Willow for a minute. “Yup, I definitely see a candidate for pizza therapy. It’s in the store fridge, on the purple plate.”

Vierna nodded. “Thanks Papa!”

As they ran in, Tio Soos yelled after them “Purple plate! The slice on the white plate is regular pizza!”

They burst into the back room and ran to the fridge, pulling out the purple plate from the fridge.

Willow looked at the white plate that had a slice of mushroom and anchovy pizza on it.

“Vi?”

“Mmffhmm?” Vierna replied, mouth full of pizza.

“Why does your dad have pizza in here if you have infinite pizza already?”

Vierna swallowed and held up the infinite pizza slice.

“Forever pizza only comes in pepperoni. Sometimes it’s nice to spice it up a bit.”

She handed the slice to Willow.

“But can’t you sprinkle other toppings on top of this piece before eating it?” Willow asked. She took a bite, and felt a groan of happiness rip out of her throat. Forever pizza was always the best pizza she ever had. No other came even close.

Vierna waggled her hand. “I suppose but Papa thinks that infinite pizza doesn’t like that.”

Willow stopped chewing, and looked at the slice in her hands. Was she eating sentient pizza _oh god-_

Her friend began to laugh.

“Oh gosh Willow I’m just kidding! Oh you should have seen the look on your face it was _great!_ ”

Willow smiled. “Yeah, you totally got me Vierna.”

She handed over the pizza back to Vierna who took another bite.

“Nah,” Vierna said between chews, “you can totally put stuff on top, but it’s all cold and stuff, yanno?”

“Yeah.”

They traded the pizza back and forth for a few minutes, and Willow did feel herself begin to relax, the tension she had been carrying between her shoulders and in her neck starting to drain away.

Vierna must have noticed because she nodded with satisfaction. “Good. Forever pizza is working.”

Willow must have looked startled because Vierna rolled her eyes fondly.

“Dude, I’ve known you since like, forever. I can tell when something is bugging you; not that you’d tell any of us because you’re a goof.”

She blushed and looked down. “Thanks Vi. You’re a good friend.”

Vierna wrapped her into a rib cracking hug. “Any time Will.”

“Vi…can’t…breathe…”

The other girl blushed and let go. “Oops.”

That reminded her. “Vi, is the weightlifting coach still asking if you’re going to try out for the team?”

\--------------

“Tomorrow is the last day of school.”

“Yes Ms. Lilly.”

Ms. Lilly leaned back in her chair slightly, hands steepled in thought, giving time for Willow to think as well.

They had spent the past month and a half refining what Ms. Lilly referred to as ‘the external uses of our gift.” They had gone over increasingly subtle methods of tampering with the emotions of others. It wasn’t just about making someone feel something randomly, her teacher explained time and time again, but making them think that it was their idea, their emotions.

“Think of them as,” Ms. Lilly had explained one day, “as…your puppets. The puppet does not know that you control its strings or movements, if you in turn are a good, smooth puppetmaster.”

Every single thing about this made Willow sick to her stomach. But she couldn’t back out now, not until she had seen this to its end, whatever that would be.

“Were you planning on viewing the solar eclipse with the rest of the school?” Ms. Lilly finally asked.

Events like eclipses were viewed with some dread in her house, as that meant that Uncle Dipper would be buffeted from the summons of hundreds of cults, and inevitably one or two would pull him in.

He came home covered in the colors from five, ten, fifteen different people, all screaming out varying shades of agony, and his clothes dripped on to the floor.

All she said was, “No, not really.”

Ms. Lilly smiled, tight lipped as always. “Well, I had one final lesson planned. Perhaps we could move it to 11:30 when everyone else will be outside. After all, it is the last day of school, and I am sure you would like to go home a little early rather than stay after with me.”

Play it cool, shoulder Stan advised. Willow smiled, matching Ms. Lilly’s closed mouth.

“Oh my goodness, thank you Ms. Lilly! I really appreciate it.”

“Of course my girl.” She opened a drawer and took her grade book out. “I will see you tomorrow Willow.”

Willow walked out, head spinning and stomach churning.

Whatever was going to happen, whatever was going to go down, it was going to be tomorrow. One way or another, something was ending.

Something would have to be done.

And she wouldn’t even get to eat lunch first.


	6. Chapter 6

Willow had been sitting on the roof, in the lawn chair Aunt Wendy had left up there, when she heard a sound from behind her.

Her head whipped around and she felt the fire under the surface of her skin waiting to be called, to be let out and-

“Mom?” Willow relaxed a bit.

Her mom came out, surrounded as always by a cloud of varying shades of red. She had in one hand one of the big blankets (the one with two unicorns horn fighting on it) and in the other a thermos.

“Can I join you Willow-cat?”

“Yeah Mom.”

Her mom came over and sat down next to Willow on the roof. Willow slid off the chair, and her mom wrapped the two of them up in the blanket.

Willow leaned her head against her mom’s head-she was too tall to lean against her shoulder-and closed her eyes for a minute.

“What’s got your goat sweetie?”

Willow looked down and crossed her arms. “Nothing.”

Her mom cackled. “Oh ho hoooo, it’s something alright. You can’t fool the alpha mom!”

“I thought Uncle Dipper told you that you aren’t the alpha mom?”

Mom blew a raspberry. “Pbbbbbbbbt, he just says that because he’s jealous he’s not alpha mom.”

In the light of the moon, Willow could see the slight burn scars that were on her mom’s neck and hands.

Scars that were her fault.

Her throat closed up and her stomach roiled. Mom looked at her, but said nothing for a minute or two.

Finally, Willow managed to choke out, “I have a big test tomorrow I’m a little worried about, that’s all.”

Mom raised an eyebrow. “That’s an awful terrifying test you have tomorrow dear.”

“It is.”

Willow’s mom leaned her head back to look at the stars above them.

“Your uncle kept a lot of things from me, right before the Transcendence.”

Willow’s mouth dropped open. Where the _fuck_ had that come from?

Mom was absently tracing circles with one calloused hand on the roof. “He…we…well, we weren’t talking as good as we usually did. And he was so convinced he had things under control, that he could handle it.”

The hand stopped circling.

“Until he couldn’t.”

“Mom-“

Her mom looked Willow in the eyes, and she couldn’t get a read on her mom at all.

“If you need help, you call. You get someone, okay? Don’t be a goober like your Uncle.”

Willow was speechless. She didn’t know what to say, what to do.

Mom leaned in and gave her a kiss on her forehead.

“You will always have us Willow. Always. And we will always be there for you.”

Her mom reached behind her and grabbed the thermos.

“Now, do you want some hot chocolate?”

\--------

At 11:15, the bell rang early, signaling that everyone could go outside and get ready to view the eclipse.

The classroom emptied out of everyone except for Ms. Lilly and Willow.

Acacia was the last to leave, and as she stepped through the door, she turned back for a second to see Willow still seated.

They looked at each other for a minute, then Acacia grimaced. But she nodded her head as well, and followed everyone else outside.

They were alone now, the two of them.

Willow focused on controlling her breathing, on maintaining a façade of polite interest.

Ms. Lilly stood up from behind her desk. Today she wore a floor length dress with long sleeve in her usual white, and had pearls in her ears. Unusually, she had added a broach over her left breast, bright red beads and rhinestones spilling out like blood from the pin.

She strolled over and sat down in the desk next to Willow’s.

“Are you ready for our final lesson?”

Willow nodded.

Ms. Lilly smiled.

“I have been waiting for this since we first met each other.”

She fanned her hands out across the desk.

“I have taught you how to mold the emotions of others, like clay in your hands. Did you ever wonder why that may be?”

“Self-defense?”

Ms. Lilly tittered. “Oh no darling that is what a good can of mace is for, though I _do_ suppose one could use our gift for self-defense if they did not mind abasing themselves. No, I use it for other reasons. Tell me, how old do you think I am?”

Calm, calm, stay calm. “Thirty seven?”

Ms. Lilly inhaled sharply, Willow having struck some kind of chord with her. “Oh dear, really? I was hoping for thirty three; I am not unreasonable after all, everyone must age.”

The older woman leaned in close, and for the first time Willow noticed that there was an odd smell coming off of Ms. Lilly, buried under sandalwood perfume. But it was faint and then gone again…

“I am eighty five my dear.”

Willow felt her heart stutter.

“H…how?”

One of Ms. Lilly’s hands traced an elegant circle on the desk. “When we toy with others, make them feel what we want them to, it generates an excess of energy. I am not all the way knowledgeable as to how or why. I personally believe it is a combination of their bodies fighting our power, as well as the energy anyone expands when they feel something deeply and truly.”

Willow tried to swallow despite her dry mouth. “And?”

“And we can take it, _use_ it for, as you can see, rather marvelous results.” Ms. Lilly waved a hand, free from liver spots or veins as an example.

Ms. Lilly suddenly got up and stepped over to the window, overlooking the courtyard and her classmates assembled out there, waiting for the eclipse. Willow reluctantly joined her. Not yet, not yet, couldn’t make her move yet.

“Let me demonstrate; easier in this case for me to show you rather than tell.”

Ms. Lilly looked at the vice principle, Mrs. Carter, and Willow could feel even upstairs and inside the sudden, irrational spike of happiness coming from the woman.

“Look! Observe; see around her?”

Indeed, there was a haze around Mrs. Carter, separate from the auras that Willow usually saw.  

“Touch it; reach with your mind and touch it.”

“I-“

“ _Now Willow Pines-“_

Not yet, it wasn’t time-

Tentatively, she did as she was told. Her mind reached, stretched, made contact with the odd haze around Mrs. Carter.

It felt like someone plugged her nerves into an electric socket. Every one of her hairs stood on end, and she felt the blood sizzling in her veins, felt like she was a sponge, felt-

Willow fell backwards on her ass onto the floor.

Ms. Lilly stood over her.

“How do you feel darling?”

“I…I feel-“ The scab she had gotten yesterday from tripping and skinning her knee was gone, along with the bruise on her arm she got from running into the door. She was breathing easier than she had in the last week, she felt wide awake, like she could run five miles and sing the whole time.

She felt sick to her stomach because she had stolen something, even if she wasn’t a hundred percent sure _what_ it was, from Mrs. Carter.

“Now, let’s practice some more; the eclipse is upon us so we won’t even have to stir them up. The fools will do that themselves, and all we need to do is feast.”

The nervousness, the terror, the fear she had been feeling for the last few months, all of that drained away.

“No.”

Ms. Lilly arched an eyebrow. “No, Miss Pines? I believe that I am still your teacher and thus in a position to give you orders.”

Finally, she could act. Finally, one way or another, it was going to end.

“I’m not going to hurt people with you. And I’m not going to let you hurt another person here.”

Ms. Lilly looked at Willow blankly for a minute. Then she grinned.

Willow realized that she hadn’t seen Ms. Lilly’s teeth at all this semester. She would have remembered if she had, because Ms. Lilly’s teeth were dark yellow and grey, rotting in her mouth.

“I was wondering when you would come out,” her teacher purred.

There was a cry outside and then the room was plunged into an eerie twilight as the eclipse began.

There would be no help for Willow; Uncle Dipper wouldn’t hear her for the next few minutes, her call drowned out in the summons he would be drowning in with the advent of the eclipse.

She was on her own now.

Willow called out to the fire that lived under her skin. It came to the surface…and then immediately died away.

“ _What-_ “

Ms. Lilly laughed.

“Oh darling. First of all, let us not kid ourselves, you do not have what it takes to burn someone alive. I know you do not have the stomach to kill someone. Secondly-“

She reached over and clucked Willow under the chin, and her skin crawled under Ms. Lilly’s touch.

“Did you really think that I didn’t know _all_ about you, you young fool?”

“I…”

“The teachers _do_ talk you know? Especially about a set of tall, redheaded triplets, and more specifically, the triplet with the Sight who sometimes sneezes and flames out of her ears and nose. You and your siblings are rather memorable.”

The hand on Willow’s chin tightened. “I took the measure of adding extra flame retardant spells in the room after spring break, when you started to seem less…receptive to my teachings.”

She let go and Willow stumbled back, tripping over her legs.

“Let us settle this not with physical violence, but our minds? After all,” Ms. Lilly giggled and the stench of rot rolled from her mouth, “you and I both know only one of us is leaving this room today.”

Willow nodded.

“I am curious to see how much you have learned from m-“

Willow ripped the shields away from Ms. Lilly and the older woman staggered under the mental assault. She did the same to Willow, and it felt like someone had ripped her hair out. They both fell back, rapidly rallying their defenses.

Willow backed herself against the chalkboard, holding on to the ledge for support while Ms. Lilly leaned against one of the desks.

She grinned that awful grin again. “Oh, this is _wonderful._ ” She licked her lips with a tongue covered in a white, waxy substance. “I have always wanted to know what one of our kind tasted like.”

Willow felt her temper rise, the fire under her skin boiling her blood, begging for release, wanting to burn Ms. Lilly, burn everything around her down.

“You aren’t going to find out,” she managed to grit out, and ripped the shields away from Ms. Lilly again. Her eyes darted to the clock on the wall. It was 11:33 right now. She swallowed the lump in her throat, the bitter taste in her mouth. She had thought she would have been able to draw upon her flames but she had been outwitted, outplayed. She needed…..fuck, fuck _fuck_ she needed help.

The eclipse would end at 11:37 and she could call for Uncle Dipper then. She just needed to last four minutes and-

Crippling, blinding sadness came over her in waves, and she dropped to her knees on the floor.

She curled up into a ball and began to sob, huge cries that wracked her body. The sadness was a weight on her chest, on her heart, and she wanted the earth to swallow her whole. It felt like her body could not contain the grief that was pouring into her.

 Distantly she heard the click of Ms. Lilly’s heels come to rest by her ears.

“Tsk. Woolgathering? In a fight of the minds? Shame. It is a good thing you are going to die here today; your performance reflects poorly upon me as a teacher. I would hate for that to get out.”

The smell of rot overcame her again, even as she started to struggle to breathe, her tears preventing her from pulling a full breath into her body.

“I have never actually drained someone of their energy until their heart stopped beating. Even my parents I left enough for them to live out a year or two at the farm. But for you I think I will make an exception. Besides, you are really wasting your youth. I could honestly use it more than you dear.”

A toe not so gently prodded Willow in the back as another wave of horrible, soul crushing sorrow washed over her.

“Just lie back now dear, and let me drain you. Maybe if you are a good girl I will give you a bit of happiness before you pass.”

Something inside of Willow snapped.

Far scarier and terrible beings had tried to kill Willow before this, and she had survived. If she was going to die at the hands of another, it certainly wouldn’t be to the likes of Ms. Lilly, in her fucking English classroom.

She wanted to live.

She was going to live.

The fire inside of her screamed to be let out, so Willow fed it the sorrow Ms. Lilly was forcing on her, the flame leaping higher and higher as she burned every last trace of sadness away.

There was only room for anger within her now.

“What…how… _how did you do that you little bitch?_ You should be unable to _move-“_

Slowly, shaking from the effort and using the chalkboard as a guide, Willow pulled herself up.

She looked at Ms. Lilly and something in her eyes made the pale woman take a step back.

This woman thought she knew about sadness? Thought she knew about fear? Thought she could steal her life, steal her _sister’s_ life?

She began to shove back at Ms. Lilly, pushing every single thing she could think of at her teacher. The feeling of drowning, of the water entering into her lungs, drowning from the inside out.

Every asthma attack she had ever had, and fuck she had had so many hadn’t she? Of seeing her fingers turn blue, and only having a sick whistle come from your throat as you tried to breathe.

A basement, and a monster that had ripped out of its skin, showering the room with blood, and realizing for the first time that Grunkle Stan couldn’t save her, that adults wouldn’t always be there or be able to save her.

Uncle Dipper, and seeing someone she loved covered in the blood of other people, the tiny worry that she would be next, the flash of wings and eyes she got sometimes, the feeling of something terrible and grand barely held in check.

At some point she had started screaming, tears running down her face now from anger rather than fear. Everything that had ever scared her, ever hurt her she pushed out and onto Ms. Lilly, her flames ripping through the other woman’s mind.

Willow Pines was never going to be a victim again.

Suddenly, the room was flooded with light and Ms. Lilly wasn’t standing anymore, but crumpled on the ground at Willow’s feet.

Willow stepped back, cutting off the waves of fear she had been sending out.

Ms. Lilly didn’t move, outside of taking shallow breaths.

Willow prodded her with the toe of her shoe. No response. The ground around Ms. Lilly was wet, and there was a yellow stain in her dress.

Her eyes were open, and a fly landed on her left eye.

Not a blink, not a twitch.

Hesitantly, still in shock, Willow looked at Ms. Lilly with her empathy and the Sight.

There was nothing there.

Ms. Lilly was still alive, there was probably a soul in the body still.

But everything that had made who Ms. Lilly was was gone. Willow had burned her away, hollowed her out.

She had broken the older woman’s mind.

And…in the end…it had been so easy.

The world spun and Willow blacked out, falling face first over and across Ms. Lilly’s body.


	7. Chapter 7

It had not been a good day for Dipper Pines.

It was worse because he _knew_ going in that this day was going to be terrible, knew no matter how hard he tried to stay curled up in the Shack, the call of rent flesh and spilled blood would eventually be too strong for him to resist.

It was and there was nothing more that Dipper wanted to do as the moon moved out of the way of the sun was to go home and wash the taste of blood out of his mouth (even as part of him wanted that taste to stay, wanted more of it…)

But then there was a pull on his being, a pull on the bond between him and his Little Fighter and _Willow-_

He roared into existence where Willow was, terrified of what on earth he was going to find.

“L̫̯͔͙E͈A͚͕̫͍͡ͅV̸̥͚͈̼͍͕E ̶̬̩̭̗̜͇H̴͓̣̙̙͚̺̬E̸̫̫͉̼-̶”

Dipper paused. Willow was on the floor of her classroom, passed out but otherwise fine from what he could tell.

The woman she was lying on however…

Gently, he sat down on the floor and gathered Willow into his arms. Once he got her settled and did a quick cursory check to see if she would be all right for the next minute, he stretched a hand over the woman’s forehead. Now what was going on here…?

If it weren’t for the fact that he was holding Willow in his lap he would have recoiled back across the floor and into the wall.

The body on the floor was technically alive. Her heart beat, her lungs inhaled and exhaled, and physically, even though she was about ninety four (and how the fuck had she managed that?) she was in excellent shape.

But her mind….her mind had been scoured clean, every memory burnt away, every last trace of personality wiped from her like the erosion of water over rock. Her soul was still in there but it was a tiny spark, cowering deep in the recesses of her mind, every trace of this life wiped clean from it.

 _He_ could do something like that, other demons could do something like that but he didn’t sense the presence of anyone else having been in the room, just the woman and-

His breath stole away and he looked down at his niece who was beginning to stir.

Voices outside reminded Dipper that if he didn’t do something and fast some very awkward questions would be asked, so he blipped all three of them into the Mindscape.

\---------

When Willow opened her eyes, the world around her was grey. She felt soft grass under her and in the distance heard the baa’s of Uncle Dipper’s flock and _fuck_ -

She threw her arm over her face, covering her eyes again, and let out a groan.

“Willow? Willow, what happened?”

She opened her mouth to tell the truth and what came out was “I found her like that and then I passed out.”

Willow winced. He would never buy that.

She could hear the smirk on her uncle’s face. “Nice try kid, but I could smell that lie on you from a mile off. What really happened?”

Her mind raced. She couldn’t tell him the truth, she was going to deal with this on her own…

“Willow.”

But no wait, it was too late for that, and hadn’t she already been thinking of calling him for help before this happened?

“Willow!”

But how was she going to explain this, no one would look at her the same way again now that they knew what she could do and it was getting harder to breathe and-

_“Aṇ͖̮͓̘ͅt͈̩̺̼̰̹a͓͈r̬͔͕̞e̯̝͔ṣ̗!̘”_

The sound of her True Name slammed into her bones and her head snapped up without her willing it too. Her heart raced.

Uncle Dipper looked into her eyes, and then away. “Willow, I..I’m sorry, I just…relax, okay?”

She slumped back, feeling like a puppet whose strings had been cut, her muscles quivering with the sudden rush of adrenaline, the feeling of being a speck of dust to something far, far grander than her.

She felt Uncle Dipper sit down next to her, take one of her hands in his.

“Little Fighter, please…tell me what happened.”

She broke.

In fits and starts, with tears streaming down her face, she told her uncle everything. At some point she had crawled into his lap and gained one of his handkerchiefs with little stars embroidered in that Mom had made for him.

Finally she finished.

There was silence for a second, and then Dipper grabbed her into a bone breaking hug. Even as she cried into his front she felt tears drip into her hair.

She didn’t ask him what to do. She didn’t ask him to fix it. This was her mess, her problem, and even if Uncle Dipper was a demon, she knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

Her uncle pulled back a bit so he could look her in the eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me or your parents?” he asked softly.

Willow blushed and looked away.

“Because I could handle it.”

“Well, obviously you didn’t.”

Willow threw herself off of Uncle Dipper’s lap. She was suddenly furious and she didn’t know a hundred percent why, but just that that _tone_ in her Uncle’s voice was the last straw for this terrible day.

“I was trying my best!”

Uncle Dipper frowned. “Willow, I am a _demon._ I could have handled this in like, thirty seconds flat.”

“Could you have?”

“Y͢e _s_!”

“But you told me you didn’t know everything about…about this, about _me!”_

“Willow I-“

Tears had started to fall down her face again. “ _No_ Uncle Dipper! I bet you never bothered to look hard! You just searched once, and thought you knew everything and that was that! Did you know there were people like Ms. Lilly?”

“I-“

“ _Did you?”_

Her uncle looked down for a second. “No…” He looked up again. “But this doesn’t change the fact that you should have had _me_ deal with this-“

“No!” The words were tearing out of Willow, from a part of her she didn’t know existed until now. “If you really cared you would have looked! You would have kept trying to learn! You would have talked to other people like…like…like me.”

The words died on her lips and she turned away from Uncle Dipper, to look at the human shell she had made.

She had done that, it had been her that burned and hollowed out Ms. Lilly until she was just a body.

Willow had done that. No one else, just her.

She managed to move two or three feet away from both her uncle and her teacher before she threw up everything she had had for breakfast, continuing to dry heave even after her stomach was empty.

At some point she was aware of her uncle holding her hair back while she vomited, a hand stroking her back as she heaved.

She heard Uncle Dipper take a breath, once, twice, like he was about to say something, but stopped himself before doing so.

Finally, he said, “What do you want to do?”

Willow sniffed and wiped her eyes and mouth off. She thought about it for a minute.

“What would it take for…all of this to go away?”

“Kid, you’ve got to be more specific.”

Willow screwed up her face in thought.

“Okay, what if….it looks like Ms. Lilly had a heart attack while I happened to be in the bathroom and I came back and found her?”

Her uncle, for lack of a better term, goggled at her.

“Heart attack like…Willow?”

Inside she felt…cold. Very cold. But this needed to be done.

“Her life for you to make this happen.”

Sweat was beading on her uncle’s forehead. “Willow, do you know what you are asking? What you are offering?”

She felt like she was going to puke again but she held on.

“Uncle Dipper, there’s no way that she’d…that she’d ever be _normal_ again, is there?”

“Well no, but Will-“

“What is her soul doing?”

“Um, it’s, um…well…”

“ _What is it doing?”_

“…hiding, but Willow, you’re only fifteen you-“

“I know what I’m doing Uncle Dipper. This is my fault and I’m fixing it. There’s nothing here for her now so she needs to go, to move on.”

Uncle Dipper looked lost.

“Willow….Antares…”

She swallowed, resisted the urge to keep this argument going because she knew as well as Uncle Dipper that they only had a limited amount of time in the Mindscape before her reality interfered.

“Is what made her her coming back?”

“….no.”

“Would her life be a good trade for what I’m asking?”

“Well yes, but Willow-“

“Is there anything for her here now?”

Her uncle looked away, unable to meet her in the eye. Finally, he whispered, “No.”

Willow nodded, projecting a surety that she herself didn’t entirely feel.

“That’s settled then. And don’t tell Mom and Dad.”

Uncle Dipper, who had started to calm down barely, freaked the fuck out again.

_“W͚͎͍͉̺H͏̞̞͖̭̺̰̦A͚̩T̗̝͇͓?̧͎̗͓̮”_

Willow scowled, ignoring the upset in her stomach, in her heart, because she needed to do this, needed to be strong.

“They can’t know this, they can’t ever know this about me-“

“Willow, they’re your parents, they aren’t…aren’t going to repudiate you or anything like that.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And you tell Mom everything you’ve seen and done?”

Uncle Dipper blushed. “That’s not the same.”

“Isn’t it?” Willow looked down at her hands, unable to meet Uncle Dipper in the eyes. “I…I don’t want them to think bad of me.”

“They never would. They never _could._ ”

Another tear dripped out of her eye and down her cheek. “And they’d cover me in bubble wrap instead. You know they would Uncle Dipper.”

“I…”

She buried her face in his shirt again, partially because she needed that comfort, but partially (and shamefully) it would help her plead her case. “Uncle Dipper, _please_.”

“I...you…”

 

Uncle Dipper broke (like you broke Ms. Lilly, a traitorous part of her mind reminded her.)

 

“Okay. I…won’t tell your parents.”

 

She squeezed him, the tears coming from her eyes not insincere. “Thank you.”

 

“If it comes up organically I’m not going to cover for you,” he warned.

 

“That’s okay.”

 

“And you’re going to have to tell your siblings and Grunkle Stan yourself.”

 

“I know,” Willow said, some small sick part of her beyond relieved that Uncle Dipper was going with this.

 

He turned a calculating gaze onto Ms. Lilly on the ground.

  
“Did you have something in mind?”

 

Willow shrugged. “As far as everyone knows, I was out there with them, watching the eclipse. We all come back and find Ms. Lilly…Ms. Lilly…”

 

The word caught in her throat.

 

“…dead. On the floor. Of a heart attack or something natural like that.”

 

She felt sick just saying the words, but they needed to be said, her mess needed to be fixed.

 

Uncle Dipper nodded. “Okay kid. Do…do you want to forget?”

 

“Forget what?”

 

Her uncle waved a hand. “All of this.”

 

Willow managed to raise an eyebrow despite the upset in her stomach and soul. “I think it’d be obvious if I forgot a whole semester.”

 

He ground the heel of his hand into one of his eyes.

 

“ _No_ I meant…what you learned from Ms. Lilly. If…if you want, that is?”

 

It was tempting.

 

It was very tempting because what she knew, what she had learned, made her feel dirty on the inside, knowing how horribly and irrevocably she could hurt people now.

 

 

“I…I think I’m good Uncle Dipper.”

 

Willow had a feeling that she would have to defend herself again.

 

He wrapped her in a hug again.

 

“You saved yourself. I’m proud of you Willow-“

 

Uncle Dipper kept going for another minute but she didn’t even notice because it felt like her entire world had collapsed under her.

 

That was what she wanted, wanted to do the whole time, wasn’t it? She had saved herself with no one else’s help. She knew so much more about herself, about what she could do than ever before, and that was supposed to be good right?

 

He was proud of her and she felt like she wanted to die.

\--------------------

“And that’s when Willow ‘found’ her?”

“Willow and the rest of her class yes.”

Stan looked into his glass of whiskey.

“Well fuck.”

Dipper sighed.

“Yeah.”

Stan leaned back into the rocking porch chair, where he was sitting next to his grandnephew.

“I think we fucked up kid.”

Dipper started. “What do you mean Grunkle Stan?”

Stan laughed, but it was an ugly, dark laugh, with no trace of humor in it whatsoever.

“Where else would she have learned about keeping secrets? Or relying only on yourself and not telling other people you’re in trouble?”

Dipper’s blood ran cold.

Stan laughed that awful laugh again and drained his whiskey in one go.

“She’s just like you and me Dipper. And isn’t that terrifying?”

Dipper could say nothing, frozen in horror at the realization.

Mabel stepped outside on to the porch.

“Hey guys, dinner is about ready and-“

She frowned.

“Is everything okay?”

Stan and Dipper looked at each other.

“Yeah Mabel,” Dipper replied.

He looked down at his hands.

“Everything is just fine.”


End file.
